


Useful

by Lykotheia



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Loki gives a gift, M/M, Trickster Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 01:18:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lykotheia/pseuds/Lykotheia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Thor gets to be valiant in war, Loki thinks that he is only useful. </p>
<p>Loki’s first thought was, <i>They must have been happy I was away.</i><br/>They usually were, always relegating to him the most irksome tasks of a defensive maneuver—logistics were Loki’s venue, with Thor automatically being handed the strategic reins. It was not, he knew, that they distrusted his ability to plan a successful battle, but rather that they distrusted his <i>methods</i>, ever afraid for their honor, linked inextricably to Thor’s sterling reputation. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>TL;DR:Wherein Loki is tricky, and bravery comes in many forms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Useful

**Author's Note:**

> Usual warnings, namely my ruthless misuse of Norse legend. (Granted, I actually *did* look this one up, though this falls within the realm of Marvel, not a re-making of myth.)

Starlight fanned out in webs across the marble tile, pitted with darkness in the shapes of shifting foliage; the myrtle that overhung his balcony badly needed pruning, but it shaded the windows from the worst of the afternoon sun and left a pleasant scent in the air, so he left it. It was useful. 

Loki turned his nose up at that word— _useful_. 

Exactly what he was not, though no one would say as much. Thor’s companions—and nominally his own—all danced around the issue, and it was only the recent, happy turn of fate that allowed them to dodge confrontation altogether. Loki had slipped off to Nidavellir, the home of the dvergar, to press (deceive) them into forging a proper panoply for him. His ceremonial armor was intimidating, but a lean plated cuirass and a gorget—“you might enamel the edges”—were necessary additions. Loki had been satisfied with their exchange; having appeared in the gloomy, smoke-fogged labyrinth of their underground world, he relieved Brokkr the smith of the host of his precious tools, leaving behind only those which would be necessary to craft what he wished. The dwarf’s evident displeasure—near to panic, even—made the trickster wary of having missed something. No tool was that precious, not even theirs, and he decided to search the searing workshop again in the dwarf’s absence.

With alarm already evident, Loki had even tried his hand at civility, reminding the craftsman that he had hewn both the ashwood Gungir and Draupnir for Odin and Mjolnir for Thor—he neglected to mention his own reneging on the bargain--and that Brokkr was not a stranger to the patronage of Odin’s household. Bafflingly—or not, dwarves were notoriously short-tempered—Brokkr had only hissed back at him, “You are not they.” 

Indeed not; he had no mighty weapon to equal either of theirs, though his seidr, regularly masked, had grown substantially. Loki had said, “Make me a spear of equal strength,” and Brokkr had refused, insisting that without Odin’s approval he would do no such thing. He would fashion him a full panoply or nothing at all, and Loki resigned himself to that. 

He dwelled a full three days atop the surface of Nidavellir, entering down now and again under the pretense of inspecting the progress of his armor, always hoping to find the chambers empty. After the first try, the dwarf’s ire and unease had subsided considerably; whatever it was he had thought Loki discovered, he had since reassured himself of its presence. It was on the third and final day of his stay that he tore through the unoccupied space with seidr, finally locating, behind a brick that was too neatly placed, too perfectly-cut, what Brokkr had been hiding. A fine gold ring, too wide for his own finger but marvelously carved in solid gold, a dozen interlocking hammered bands. Remembering Brokkr’s earlier creation, Loki shook it, holding it out over his palm, and a handful of gold rings, equal in weight and size, fell cold onto his skin. _A second Draupnir._  
Stowing it away, he replaced the magic ring with one of its duplicates, making himself scarce before his unwilling provider returned. He would discover it soon enough, and hopefully be willing to exchange something more valuable than a corselet for it. 

\-----

When he returned to Asgard, he found his brother and his companions absent, only his father left behind to explain it to him. A minor scuffle along the borders, wandering Jotnar who took it upon themselves to pillage a series of small hamlets, emptying granaries and salting gardens. Not a serious enough charge to warrant the Allfather’s attentions, but an ideal test and distraction for a young prince. Loki’s first thought was, _They must have been happy I was away._

They usually were, always relegating to him the most irksome tasks of a defensive maneuver—logistics were Loki’s venue, with Thor automatically being handed the strategic reins. It was not, he knew, that they distrusted his ability to plan a successful battle, but rather that they distrusted his _methods_ , ever afraid for their honor, linked inextricably to Thor’s sterling reputation. 

“I will not win a battle by deceit, Loki,” Fandral had once reproved him, the younger prince snapping back that Fandral would not win _any_ battles because he was not a general or king, and the claim was not his to make. But still he had pressed now and again, reminding Thor not only to overpower the enemy, but to outwit him. Consideration of the physical was integral, but equally so, the psychic. Breaking the morale of an opponent army was as necessary as breaking its back, but Thor refused to see the glory in using his fearful reputation to his advantage, ever after a good fight, assuming that would always lead to a good victory, too. Thus far it had, but Asgard had faced no serious threat since Thor’s infancy, when the war with Jotunheim had occurred, and Frigga had been pregnant with her second son. _But I have read and you have not; when one of us is king, one day, this maneuver must play as great a role as your love of honest fighting, or you will never maintain the wide-ranging borders of our empire._

Now Loki paced the length of the balcony, back and forth, in and out of shadow and starlight; it spangled his dark clothes and the fair hue of his skin. 

They had been gone a full five days, but ought to be riding back by now, Odin had estimated, making no inquiry as to Loki’s distracting adventures. He had no doubt that the Allfather knew them already, or would shortly, either from Heimdall or Brokkr himself. Long fingers tapped distractedly at the element-smoothed ridge of the banister, chalky white beneath his pink nails. He could picture them riding back, fighting the battle all over again and arguing the details; was it five Hogun had killed, or six? Sif had surely taken on three at once, not two—Fandral was discrediting her. And Thor, at the center of things, would have the tallest tale of all, though he need not. Loki imagined he had given the Jotnar some clumsily crafted, impromptu speech to justify their punishment, reminding them of their strictures of the treaty between their kingdoms and all the warnings that came with it. 

And they would have followed him into it and back proudly, gladly, and Loki’s own absence was noticed only by way of relief. There was no younger prince suggesting they make captives of the intruders, that they pry information from them and discover whether their incursion was a fool-headed anomaly or part of Laufey’s grander scheme. No one to make a chore of their fun or risk the glory of their homecoming with the unsightly transport of prisoners. 

And yet had he been in Asgard, regardless of what the others wished, Thor would have brought Loki along. And he _loathed_ that. 

_Do I only ever effect any change through your patronage?_ Folding his arms now atop the banister, he peered down across the courtyard to the open, half-lit stoa near the feast-hall, only distantly visible, though sound carried well on the night air. There was a clanging of metal and a sudden cacophony of voices. They were back. 

“And the venerable eldest returns.” He murmured into the air, surprised and not showing it when he heard a response.  
“Laden with thank-gifts and the stink of five days’ travel,” Thor jested, leaning over the railing to mimic his brother’s posture. Loki could feel the pressure of his gaze tracing his profile, prying past his evermore complex facades.

“I brought you a prize,” Thor said, nudging one sharp elbow with his own. He proffered a hollowed horn, almost three handspans in length and elegantly tapered at one end. Not just an animal’s horn. “Not only for display,” he assured him, “This is something that might actually prove useful.” A self-conscious cough. “Since you weren’t able to come and take one for yourself.”

“What in the nine realms is it?”

“A horn,” Thor said helpfully.

“I see that. It’s not…?”

“It’s not one of theirs—they’re not hardly so large,” Thor said hurriedly. The notion was barbaric; it had come from one of their beasts, he explained, and this one in particular had been stripped from the body of the leader. “They use them to sound advances and retreats in battle. It’s from a bilgesnipe.”

“Hm.” Loki inspected it, turning the brittle thing over in his hands, disdaining to put his mouth to the edge. The fine quality of the bone, treated well with oil and scraped neatly out with a curved knife, spoke of a degree of craftsmanship he had not ever imagined among the Jotnar. And the item’s purpose indicated petty border raids were not their sole means of aggression. 

“I missed your company.” Thor tried again, perhaps unable to read his expression. 

“Yes, I imagine you had to draw lots to clean up the dead. Or did the villagers manage that?”

Thor frowned. “Loki I mean it. Where were you?” 

“Busy.”

The elder huffed, shoulder pushing into his. “You are always busy. I’d thought you would come aid us. Their leader seized a number of the women, held them against us.” He paused, expecting a reply, and when he received none, added, “We regretted your absence then. You have a…” He moved his hand in a generic, meaningless gesture, “A way of swaying people.”

“You seem to have managed fine.”

“Sif took a risky shot from the parapet of the local citadel; she caught him through the eye.” He tapped his own, indicating it had been the right one. “He was the last of them, luckily.” Turning his face forward, trying to see what Loki saw in the darkness, his hand grazed the back of his brother’s arm affectionately, persuading him to spare a glance. 

“It may only have been a border skirmish, but it still counts as a rout, does it not?”

“I don’t see why not,” Loki agreed with a shrug. “What, have you started collecting skulls now?”

Thor snorted in amusement. “No war trophies, brother.”

“What of it then?”

Thor looked momentarily abashed, discomfited, and Loki’s eyebrow rose to a neat peak. 

“Your absence deprived us of your skill in battle, but you might at least welcome me home properly.”

Loki gaped, straightening at once. “I welcome you to a bath, Thor.” He said flatly. 

“Well that’s a start,” he teased, clasping Loki in a loose embrace from behind, the sort they used to share as children. Feeling his brother stiff and unyielding beneath his arms, he released him. A moment later, the creak of a door, and water was running freely from within his chambers.

_He has to use_ mine _?_

Locking the exit to the terrace, Loki lay the horn aside and stood in the open doorway of the baths with folded arms, frowning as Thor dirtied the steaming water. The floor was smeared with the dark color of his clothes and the mud from the crevices in his boots. 

Thor made a dismissive gesture in response to his brother’s irked expression. “The servants will take care of it.”

“You’re ever eager to add to their chores.” 

Scrubbing his hair out, back bent to submerge the tumble of gold beneath murky water, he asked again, “So where did you go, Loki?”

“Nidavellir.” He answered him lightly, with false indifference, and was surprised at Thor’s reaction, jerking upward and standing at once so that water poured off of him and splashed onto the tiles. 

“Nidavellir?”

“Don’t make a bigger mess than you already have.” It took great strength of will not to move in the face of his rearing anger.

“Are you _mad_? Loki after what they did to you?” 

The younger prince frowned, fingertips dusting the edges of his lips reflexively, remembering the harsh strain of wire that had wound through them after his bet with Brokkr and his brother Eitri. “Yes what they did to me. You have yet to thank me for that.”

“ _Thank_ you?” Thor balked. “I never asked you to do it!”

“But it was quite _useful_ for you wasn’t it?” Loki imagined it was one of a handful of times he had ever proved himself valuable to his brother and father.

“Loki.” Still clad in nothing but the bathwater, Thor moved with surprising agility across the damp space, forcing Loki into a retreat. “Don’t say it as though I willed it.”

It had been Loki’s wager, and a stitched mouth had been considerably more lenient than the original stipulations. Loki had bet his head that the brothers could not fashion weapons more magnificent than those hewn by the sons of Ivaldi, and when they created Mjolnir and Draupnir, the Aesir gladly judged them superior. Refusing to yield his head—“That would involve the injury of my neck, which was, you will note, _not_ a part of our bargain”—Loki had narrowly escaped with his life, enduring instead an enraged Brokkr’s hand-forged wire, thin as a sewing thread and twenty times as firm, stitched through his mouth.

“So that you might not boast of this until it works its way out,” the dwarf had hissed, holding the younger god down and silencing his screams with a bit. 

The gods could count themselves well-armed after that, though none had ever thought to thank _him_ for it. 

“What could have possessed you to do that?” Thor hissed at him, one hand raised, dripping, to brush a wide thumb across his mouth. Loki despised that expression, pity and fear that resonated with each slow, controlled breath. 

“I had need of their services,” he said quietly, calmly, and felt the calloused curve of Thor’s digit slide against his skin, tasting faintly of soap and raw earth. 

“What services?” Thor pressed, thumb still sweeping back and forth; Loki could feel the daunting pressure of a blue gaze upon him.

“Arms.” Loki said, his voice a rasp. Thor was about to ask him _which_? when he bit gently into the hard skin, drawing the digit past his mouth and snaking his tongue easily up to the knuckle in a expressively intimate kiss. 

“You mustn’t go back,” Thor insisted, his breath hitching when teeth pressed more firmly into tense flesh. 

“I’ll have to,” Loki said, speaking right into the kiss before releasing him, green eyes rolling back to meet his boldly. “Now are you done with your bath?”

“Rather,” Thor said distractedly, leaning in to cup his neck, fingering his hair. “I don’t understand why you would risk yourself going back when--”

_Won’t you let it go?_

Loki surged up onto the balls of his feet, mouth clipping his and forcing him into silence with a small muffled “Mn,” as though he had won something. 

Thor kissed him in return, absentmindedly at first because his concentration was elsewhere, and then abruptly it shifted and Loki found himself carried back by the sheer force of his movement, tumbled into the sheets beneath damp muscle and a netted tangle of hair that smelled of his soap and Thor’s woodsy musk. 

“You’re trying to distract me,” he accused, forcing Loki’s head back with a fist in his mane, freely mouthing a line down his throat, pushing the front of his shirt open. 

“No,” Loki murmured, green eyes narrowed with interest as the irises thinned, hips pressing up and into the ridge of his leg. “I’m succeeding.”

“Yes,” came a breathy agreement, and Loki’s attempt to sling a thigh about him and reverse their positions, to tumble his brother into the pelts and push his arms back and over his head, failed almost before it started. 

Groaning lightly in aggravation, he yielded and flicked open the catches of his cloak and trousers, peeling back fabric and baring his skin to the air and the still-dripping rub of curious hands.

“When we camped by the river I thought of you.” Thor admitted.

“Mn?”

“Yes.” A heavy breath, palms stroking his hips and the insides of his thighs, pushing them apart and touching the tender skin between. “Thought of this.”

Loki hummed a sound of appreciation, letting his knees remain comfortably splayed, knowing Thor valued, if nothing else, seeing what none other was permitted. 

“Why have we never coupled outdoors?”

Growling in annoyance, Loki shoved himself up onto the backs of his elbows. “We haven’t ‘coupled’ at all—and what sort of an imbecilic question _is_ that?”

“A good one, I think,” Thor said flatly, wheat-colored brows rising in the face of his little brother’s agitation. “Do you prefer the bed?”

“I’d take the floor if you’d get on with it,” Loki panted at him, arching his back enough to find the barest friction against the ridges of his stomach. 

Taking it as a compliment—didn’t he always?—Thor pressed down over him and sought out his sweet spots slowly, only giving way to impatient grappling and muffled, moaned curses when the skin beneath his flushed with heat. Tangling together, wet and dry atop the bedding, they managed to muss the covers and topple half the pillows into a colorful spill across the tile. 

Narrow heels slid against the slick edges of the sheets in search of leverage, finally giving in and digging hard into the small of Thor’s back, his own bent sharply in an arc, forcing the breath out of him in staccato gasps. A low baritone was muttering something at his ear, kissing a path across his hairline and the fine creases at his forehead and the corners of his eyes. Dizzy with the steady push and pull of pressure, the thrumming energy that pulsed between them and made the hand-carved headboard shudder and tap lightly into the wainscoting, he thought to swat him away, trying to breathe. Thor was still saying something.

“What?” Giddy, he pressed his cheek halfway into the down of the pillow, neck bent and then arched as Thor _moved_ and a tremor of sensation wound its way up from his core, spiraling out along his limbs so that even the tips of his fingers sparked with electricity. _Oh, please, yes._ He couldn’t say it aloud, even in this state, but the scrape of his palms and twist of his tongue must have communicated enough. His brother was smiling into his skin, huffing hot breath over the surface in an easy match to their rhythm. The murmured words again, and a firm grasp of his thighs, canting so that his knees slid and Loki, keen to know, asked it again. 

“Beautiful.” It seemed a truncated sentence; he was erratic now, gilded hair flung back with the tilt of his head. 

“ _What_?” Loki’s balking protest dissolved readily into a groan; long fingers twisted into a white-knuckled fist in his hair, tugging hard as they joined and nerve endings ignited with relief. A spill of heat, and he heard an embarrassingly noisy moan, undulating and strained, and only recognized it for his own when his throat began to ache. 

There was a scalding moisture between his thighs, spilling out and along the shallow curve of his backside, staining his good coverlet and smearing his skin thick with Thor’s scent. Something in him was pleased by that, or comforted, and he felt a latent stirring in his groin, put to rest by exhaustion. 

Thor kissed him afterwards—he always did—and slid strong arms about his waist, giving Loki free rein to touch his face and hair, to guide him and thrust him away when he would have no more of it. Slower to do so that night, a silver tongue wound its way into his mouth, hands slipping down his jawbone and through his mane, over the hard planes of muscle on his chest and sides. He liked to be touched almost everywhere, and it was not until Loki was sitting astride, arousal pushing into his belly, that the prince bucked and reversed their positions and his brother’s fortune, not about to yield to him. 

“Let me have you,” Loki spoke against the shell of his ear, green eyes half-shut in bleary pleasure, already responding to the hand searching out pink skin between his thighs. 

“But Loki, I brought you a prize,” he reminded his brother, sliding down to kiss his neck and chest, strong hands pinning his hips.

“Is that the way of it then?”

“I think it should be,” Thor agreed, mouth vibrating on his hip bone before he bit, earning a pleased hiss and the eager twitch of his arousal. 

“I’ll remember,” Loki panted, gesturing him up and forward, welcoming him with brutal strength and daunting heat. 

Moonlight played over the surface of the bed in imperfect squares as the night progressed, filtering in past the windowpanes and gossamer curtains and making its gradual journey across the room. Green sheers warped the silver glow and turned it a fair shade of moss, a canopy of leaves over their skin when they finally stilled, one buried beneath a layer of sheets and the other sprawled in lethargic exposure atop a mound of them. 

They woke startled to the racket of pounding outside the door, the tiny fists of a maid and a shrill, nervous voice.

“Prince? _Oh_ —Prince?”

Thor tumbled with a pained grunt from the mattress under the force of Loki’s kick, disappearing from sight although the sturdy lock held well and the servant made no attempt to work the knob. 

“What?” Loki growled, his voice hoarse from sleep and shouting—certainly more the former than the latter?—and glared expectantly at the bronze-wrapped oak. 

“Prince, the Allfather insists upon your presence _at once_ ,” she said with a strange surge of temerity that managed to filter past the entry. He imagined she had her mouth upon or near the crack of the hinges. 

“Yes,” he agreed gruffly, dressing in haste but with no less care than he always did. Watching Thor in the mirror, blue eyes curious at the urgency of the message, but still playful, the indolent exploration of the past night still present.

“What could this be about?”

“I can’t imagine,” Loki lied blithely, drawing a dark cloak over either shoulder and securing a perse-hemmed cincture at his waist. Slipping a hand through his drawer, he found the belt’s clasp and another sting of chilly metal, pausing and offering a patient smile as a comforting hand brushed his nape and the line of his back. He turned and glanced meaningfully at the rumpled wardrobe presented him. He made himself too obvious this way. “You shouldn’t follow just yet,” he advised, and Thor agreed, wishing him luck before scanning the hall and ducking out. No sooner had he gone than two of Odin’s men appeared, less retiring but equally urgent as the servant who had come to warn him moments ago. 

“Yes?” Loki snapped to attention, exasperation evolving quickly into outright ire at the gross breach of propriety and privacy.

“To report to the Allfather, Prince,” they said, neither intent on leaving. Loki heard them began to pull the room apart shortly thereafter.

The great hall was emptied of all save the Allfather and, not at all to Loki’s surprise, Brokkr, who stood like a savage dark smear against the glowing chryselephantine backdrop of Asgardian elegance. Did he feel out of place among such finery? Was he not uncertain, so far above his own realm, in the presence of Aesir and Vanir when his own kind dwelt beneath the dirt? He did not seem so, and Loki felt a prickle of disgust at his arrogance. Instead, he feigned mild confusion.

Odin was having none of it, familiar enough with his younger son’s ruses and exploits in Nidavellir. He asked his son if he had ventured to Brokkr’s forge. He had. And had Loki also demanded a panoply of him? Yes—he was in sore need of one, in fact. Is it true that the prince also arranged this by way of blackmail? Well—a small truth to cover a bigger lie—there may have been only the slightest bit of _coercion_ involved, yes. 

“Brokkr accuses you of having stolen from him. Not his tools, but a ring.”

“A ring?” Loki asked, eyebrows rising. “I don’t recall a ring. What sort?” 

Brokkr shuffled about the inquiry, knowing better than to admit to having crafted a second Draupnir after it had been made Odin’s prize years ago. “A golden ring,” he bit out, “And you know just the sort.”

The men who had startled him awake were returned, their feet clattering across the tile as they came to a standstill near the entry, addressing Odin and admitting that they found nothing in his chambers. Brokkr peppered him with questions, but his logic was riddled with fallacies and his rhetoric pitted with false-starts and bad turns. Loki could feel his father’s bafflement when he held his peace in lieu of responding, letting the dwarf shout accusations at him and dredge up past wrongs, convincing himself all the more as he progressed that the prince had seized what was his and would soon be caught out for it. 

Bearing up the evidence of their careful search, one of the guards spoke half-heartedly, palms extended upward and flat. But they had found nothing, and were skilled with seidr. There was nothing of Brokkr’s concealed in Loki’s chambers. 

“Of course he hasn’t hidden it!” Brokkr exploded, smoke-colored skin stretching taut over his wide bones. “Clever git that he is, it would be on his person!”

Loki stiffened with false indignation, but when Odin cast him an inquiring glance, he gave a small nod and said slowly, “Satisfy your curiosity then.” 

Thoroughly searched, every hidden pocket and draping patted down or turned inside-out, Loki watched the dwarf’s sneering face smooth over into quiet dread, recognizing Odin’s building ire at the accusation of his son, perhaps too remembering the origin of the pinprick scars about his lips. Stupidly, Loki found himself thinking of them too, the way the tiny ridges were almost imperceptible, and how Thor had swept his tongue over them with such reverence only hours ago. It made his blood stir and his mouth quicken with damp; swallowing, he tasted iron. 

“Might you now be assured that my son is no thief?”

Nothing about Brokkr’s expression suggested any such thing, but rather than explain why Loki might have wanted a single gold ring, and because he was unable of providing an explanation as to its whereabouts, he held his tongue, inclining his head to the Allfather in silent apology, to the dark prince in defeat. 

When he was shown out, Odin did not apologize, but said almost gently, “You recognize it was your own past action that made me doubt your complete innocence a second time.”

Loki smiled unconcernedly. “Yes, and Mjolnir was a fine enough thing upon which to make a wager, but what could he imagine I might want with a trinket?”

Odin frowned, shaking his head, and glanced up with a spark of light in his eyes at the thud of boots from the colonnade.   
“Nothing, obviously,” Thor huffed, eyes rolling back at the bother of it all. “He’s carried a grudge against you ever since you managed to outwit him and win us the finest prizes of his armory.”

“It is no jest,” Odin advised them both sternly. “I would keep peace between all of the realms, and your visit was not an undisruptive one,” he told his youngest. “Leave off dabbling in the affairs of other realms. You will have your own proper weapon when the Norns bind one to you, and no sooner.” 

Loki prickled under that pedantic platitude but smoothed his rising hackles, inclining his head with an approving nod. 

Dismissed, they took the central corridor and wandered back along the stoa, the elder protesting the inconvenience of it all—Loki estimated a good ninety-five percent of that came from his being woken too early, rather than the disorder of his brother’s bedchamber—until they paused at the archway to their private quarters, where the halls narrowed and bifurcated. 

“Come help me put my chamber to rights then, if you’re so concerned.”

Thor conceded, not because he thought the guards would have left any sort of mess to be repaired, but because Loki was wearing that _look_ again.

“I still don’t understand why you let him speak to you that way—I’ve seen you rile against _me_ for much less!” Thor blurted, latching the door behind them. “You could have torn his argument to shreds, and you hardly opened your mouth save to answer Father. Why let him malign you? One of the dvergar! What are you--”

Loki shoved forward and against him, pressing their mouths together in a persistent kiss until his tongue was forcing past Thor’s lips and – slipping something warm and firm about the tip of his, smoothed about the edges and tasting faintly ferric. Drawing away with a cough of surprise, a heavy gold ring fell out and into his waiting palm, damp from the pressure of Loki’s mouth. 

Blue eyes stared. _So that was why._ He hadn’t spoken in his own defense because the very evidence of his guilt had weighted down his tongue. 

“Loki you stole the ring.”

A bright, rasping laugh rang from the rafters in response; when Loki’s head fell back, his dark hair dusted his nape and the rich fabric of his cloak, curling about the edges. “Well one must be useful in some things, Thor.”

“Loki you are above useful,” he said easily, shaking his head. “What could you possibly want with such a trinket?” He demanded, using his brother’s words from moments ago. 

“Shake it in your hand, Thor.”

Pausing, but finally obeying, Thor watched a tumble of eight golden rings fall out of the central loop, all matching in size and weight and elegant craftsmanship, lying in gleaming disorder atop the sheets of the bed. 

“It is a second Draupnir. Does Father--”

“Of course not. Do you think Brokkr would tell him? What value is Draupnir, if it is not the _only_ one of its kind?” Loki plucked up the first of the rings, turning it about between the tapered edges of his fingers and watching the gleam of the sides grow dull from the imprint of oil. He ran it along the silky edge of a sleeve and slid it promptly over Thor’s finger with a grin, eyebrows raised. “Best to keep it a secret just now, though I’m certain it will prove helpful to you.”

Pushing Thor back into the bedding with a great shove, Loki pursued, growling into a warm kiss. Wide fingers carded through his hair and down his back, heavy and affectionate, but cautious of his ever-vacillating temperament. 

Drawing back for breath, Thor’s voice emerged in a low timbre. “You’re giving it to me?” 

“Well.” A half shrug, and then teeth nipping just beneath his beard. “It doesn’t fit me.”

Thor snorted in laughter, shifting one thigh where he could feel the harsh press of the eight metal rings digging through kidskin trousers. He moved to kiss Loki again, hungrily this time, and his brother turned his face away.

“What did you mean,” he asked quietly. “Above useful?”

“What? Oh,” distracted, kissing the shell of his ear and the well-defined curve of his hairline over a wide forehead, he murmured an answer. “Only that useful is for servants and soldiers. You’re…” And Loki could see him searching for the word, eager to push past this conversation and turn him over. “Vital,” Thor said finally, looking to him as though for approval. Was this the right word? Had he communicated clearly? “How could you be anything less?”

Loki’s mouth pulled back in a slash of a smile, gentling when their foreheads brushed. “I’m not, of course,” he agreed with poise, sharp eyes flicking down only briefly before accepting his kiss. Seemingly satisfied with this, the bristle of his beard scraped a clean chin when they met again, but this time his attempt to turn them about was stalled by Loki’s well-timed shove, keeping him flat. 

“Loki,” came a well-rehearsed protest, a half-growl of annoyance at what he took to be importunacy. 

A low tenor rasped at his ear while clever fingertips worked the laces of his breeches, prising them free with practiced dexterity and strength. “But Thor,” Loki protested, bidding him recall. “I’ve brought you a prize.” 

“Well.” A discomfited cough preceded greater realization and, finally, comfort under a familiar touch. He kissed Loki’s jaw in overt affection and lay back, still able to feel the press of metal on the backs of his legs. “I suppose that is the way of it.”


End file.
